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The administration of U.S. president Donald Trump unfroze immigration processes for health professionals from 39 countries, including Venezuela, allowing them to renew visas and work permits that had been stalled since January 2026, according to Univisión.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the measure discreetly through an update on the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website, without issuing an official press release. The official justification was that doctors "provide essential services for public health and critical infrastructure."
With this decision, healthcare professionals were removed from the list of frozen categories, restoring the normal processing of H-1B visa extensions, J-1 waiver applications, and permanent residency petitions.
The original freeze had been implemented in January 2026 as part of a broader suspension of immigration proceedings for nationals from 39 countries deemed high-risk, which ended up halting more than 12 million immigration cases in total.
Only in the medical sector, the pause affected more than 10,000 doctors with H-1B visas and over 17,000 with J-1 visas, creating a crisis in teaching hospitals and rural clinics in states like Texas, New York, and Ohio.
Some healthcare centers had chosen to forgo the services of these professionals due to uncertainty regarding their immigration status, exacerbating a projected national shortage of 86,000 doctors by 2032.
The immediate practical impact is significant: foreign residents in teaching hospitals will be able to begin their rotations in July on time, and doctors working in underserved rural clinics will regain continuity in their practice.
The thawing process for doctors is part of a broader partial flexibilization announced by USCIS on the same Monday, which also included certain work authorization documents, asylum applications from countries not deemed high-risk, some rescheduled citizenship ceremonies, and international adoption forms.
However, the general freeze for the 39 high-risk countries remains in effect for most immigration categories.
The impact on the Cuban community has been especially severe: approvals for permanent residency dropped by 99.8%, from 10,984 in February 2025 to just 15 in January 2026, according to data from the Cato Institute.
Meanwhile, the detentions of Cubans by ICE increased by 463% from October 2024 to January 2026, surpassing 1,000 arrests per month.
Judicial pressure also influenced the turn of the administration. On April 28, federal judge George L. Russell III, of the District of Maryland, declared the indefinite suspension of green cards illegal and ordered the reactivation of applications for 83 plaintiffs, arguing that "USCIS has no discretion to not adjudicate cases at all."
Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar had urged the Secretary of Homeland Security to resume processing for Cubans and Venezuelans in South Florida, stating that "they have followed the law, passed all the checks, and have earned it."
More than 100,000 cases of Cubans could be affected by the migration freeze which, despite this sectoral relief for doctors, continues to paralyze millions of applications in the majority of categories.
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